Father John Bradley, pastor of Blessed Sacrament and the Shrine Church of Our Lady of the Americas, speaks during the dedication ceremony of the Sister Maureen Joyce Center on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011, in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union)

ALBANY -- The soup kitchen in the old St. Patrick's School on Central Avenue often provides the only free hot meal they can find, the most desperate and marginalized people in the city's poorest neighborhood.

The long tables and folding chairs set up in the basement are filled at lunchtime three days a week by homeless mothers with young children, chronic alcoholics and drug addicts, or folks ground down by mental illness.

After 34 years of operation, the numbers had swelled in recent months from about 130 to more than 160 people at each meal. But the rest of the sprawling empty school building had fallen into disrepair and was too costly to heat and maintain.

Now, with the help of a Roman Catholic-Jewish partnership and the generosity of numerous volunteers and donors, ground was broken Wednesday for an expanded soup kitchen and social services center in the former St. George's Church at the corner of Livingston Avenue and Thornton Street in West Hill.

It will undergo a $400,000 renovation and is expected to open in late-winter, perhaps by the end of February. The old soup kitchen will continue to provide meals until construction is finished. The new facility will bring a range of services under one roof, including a donated clothing thrift shop, medical screening, legal advice and other assistance.

"She was so dedicated to the poor and the people in need," said Rev. John Bradley, the program coordinator and pastor at Blessed Sacrament parish, which will continue to run its food pantry at the uptown Central Avenue parish.

The future Joyce Center had been vacant for some time. It had last been occupied by the Black Catholic Apostolate, which moved to Menands, and most recently by the Rev. Peter Young addiction treatment program, which has several other buildings around the city and region.

"The Joyce Center is a wonderful solution to a lot of challenges and it's going to provide much-needed services for many people who need them in this neighborhood," Bradley said.

Bradley has kicked off a fundraising campaign that has raised slightly more than $100,000 so far, with a major gift from the Albany diocese, as well as donations from Temple Beth Emeth, local Catholic parishes and congregations of other faiths.

"I never thought the project would be this big or this complex when we started out," Bradley said. "It's ecumenical and will serve the whole city."

Moving the soup kitchen was necessitated by the fact that the old St. Patrick's School is under contract for sale by the diocese to an entity Bradley would not disclose. "It will be a great asset and will bring a lot of vitality to the neighborhood if the sale goes through," he said.

Bradley is applying for grants to help fund the Joyce Center renovation.